Phantom
by Birdie Lo Green
Summary: Sirius has escaped Azkaban, fled abroad and returned to his native land but he hasn't found himself. The line between reality and insanity becomes increasingly blurred in a cold damp cave in the mountains of his discontent. (Inspired by a late night conversation, The Road and Butterfly Effect.)


Soft lips were kissing my chest, my neck, my cheeks, and my chin- it was raining again. Water dripped through the cracks, spilling down the slanting cave walls in ribbons. Rats scuttled in to escape the cold. Watching my stolen hippogriff, Buckbeak swallow them whole came with a sense of bitter satisfaction. Everything I had done had been for nothing: the traitor had escaped. I had changed the setting but not the situation; twelve years sweating in a living hell had become the stifling heat of Brazil. Now I was startled by my cold British mountain retreat. Cast iron bars lined the threshold and the days turned into years still seemed scratched into the rock.

* * *

Exhaustion had driven me to sleep again but never at night. I couldn't bear the shadows, always circling me; black tattered Dementors, floating back and forth, steadily draining me of my identity and integrity; dead men dancing in a crowded common room and father pacing in his study as I bled on to the rug. I always woke with a start in the middle of the day from nightmares or the bleating tone of a phantom alarm clock. Maroon curtains fluttered at the edges of my eye line and I felt the pressure of someone sitting at the end of a bed. Days bled into each other, barking echoed back to me and sometimes Remus's voice asked me the time or told me to come to bed. I hadn't written to him yet because I didn't know what to say. I longed for letters from my Godson. Yet I was utterly terrified of the problems he would inevitably ink into the parchment. The ensuing helplessness crushed me. It filled the cave with the aroma of murtlap essence and milk chocolate. I had earned the worthless accolade of escaping prison, not once, but twice, but now I was trapped in a reformatory of my own making, on the outskirts of a town where my best friend had shown me the wedding ring he had picked for the love of his short life and on the fringe of a society I had been a part of so long ago that it felt like a faded photograph.

* * *

Camera flash light dazed me and I forgot to strike a pose. Peter was never in our photographs because he was usually the one taking them. He had thrown all of our memories on the fire and I longed for him to burn. Too often did I relive stumbling into his empty, untouched hotel room. Things could have been different had I only given thought to my actions when it truly mattered. Once every couple of days, I bid Buckbeak goodbye, transformed in to my animal alter ego and wandered aimlessly in to town in search of food or forgotten newspapers to stay informed about the outside world. I still didn't remember what day it nearly was and sat transfixed by the shimmering Christmas lights, hanging over the high street lined with carol singers. Their soaring voices took me away over the snow tipped peaks, across a lake and back to a packed Great Hall. My party hat was uncomfortable. I didn't need mistletoe as an excuse to kiss but Remus didn't want people to know. He took me into a secret room and gifted me a dog collar which I had refused to take off. I wondered if he had dug it out of a dusty box now or if it was lost like all our old good intentions.

* * *

Pretending to be a lovable stray, children petted and hugged me. I knew that their loving parents wouldn't have allowed them within five feet of the bedraggled mess beneath the shining brown eyes and I couldn't blame them. I curled up on doorsteps and watched people buying presents for their loved ones. James told me to man the entrance as he slipped in the back under cover of his invisibility cloak. I felt invisible myself and tried not to think about the loneliness of the Christmas morning waiting around the corner. I stole a few bottles of mead from the cellar of the Three Broomsticks, sent Remus a long overdue letter and slept straight through to Boxing Day. Snow dusted the opening and I waded through discarded wrapping paper to go and take a piss. The full moon shone down over me and the weight of Remus's body left my shoulder as we lowered him into bed. It hurt to think of him out there on his own. Human beings were pack animals and we'd both become separated, wandering the wilderness, howling in the night. I liked to think that he could hear me because his breath was still hot on my ear. Wrapped in three moth bitten blankets, I was chilled to the bone, tormented by the flickering of an imaginary fire; the whisper of a forgotten record skipping in the corner; boyish laughter; the slow strumming of an out of tune guitar; soft muffled crying and the hard slaps of flesh upon flesh. Remus and I made love, rushed and angry. I pressed a palm to my burning cheek and begged for my mother's forgiveness. Her ring had left a scar.

* * *

I frantically ran my hands over my scarred, tattooed skin in a desperate attempt to keep warm. I jogged around the quidditch pitch and stole beneath the bleachers for a cigarette. James had always made out with girls under there. Whenever I found his tie in the mud I hung it up in the locker room like a trophy. Buckbeak sat behind me, her body a feathered pillow, one huge wing became a heated blanket. She murmured in her sleep and I knew that we shared similar dreams of freedom but I longed for the warmth of someone else's hands. Instead I transformed and went running, my eyes welling up when for a moment I was sure of a stag bounding beside me. James joked about stuffing him when he died and a part of me wished that I had because I was so proud of that catch. Without him, I felt empty in my bones, more and more with every passing year.

* * *

Harry took time out of the stress of his busy life to visit and for a fleeting, blissful moment I thought his father had returned to me. He brought me food in exchange for fatherly advice. Those emerald eyes flickered from beneath a fringe and I was assaulted by his mother's musical giggle. Lily bowled me over and pinned me down, showering me in autumn leaves. Her son had been fraudulently entered into a fatally dangerous competition but he had survived because that was what he was good at. I remember how he was sick when he was born, pushed out early into this world and no one thought he would make it. Those midwives looked foolish now but I hoped that they hadn't stopped praying for him. At his christening he had filled his nappy with a contented smile and we all held our noses like we were underwater. I don't even know who taught him to swim or to tie his shoelaces or to tell the time but I hope that he still has plenty and that the Dark Lord Voldemort has none. He took his parents and dozens more to their deaths. Twelves years later, he's on the move again whilst they're frozen stiff, six feet under, bloated and floating in watery graves or blown asunder, no body left to mourn. I think I'd prefer the latter. I couldn't bear another second of being boxed in. Remus never got me a leash to go with that collar. In my future, I wanted to run free.

* * *

When Dumbledore instructed me to enlist what remained of the old crowd I didn't waste time. The Order of the Phoenix had planned strategies around chipped table tops, argued heatedly into the night, celebrated victories, lamented losses and followed each other down dark alleys. By nightfall I allowed Buckbeak out to feed on small animals living in the undergrowth, did what I could with my long matted hair, washing it in a nearby stream, stole a jacket from the back of a pub chair and set off for the homes of old allies. My only hope was that they had been sufficiently debriefed enough not to attempt murder at the sight of me. They had cursed my name and rallied for my death so we were guaranteed one thing in common. I had never blamed any of them for not thinking to refute my sentence. The war had ended and they had gone back to their families. In a way I had too because every member of the most noble and ancient house of Black had ended up behind bars or worse. Life was just an awfully long time to be there and a letter would have made things better; even if it was line after line of loathing and signed without a kiss. There had never been anything I hated more than being ignored.

* * *

Remus was probably getting worried that I was ignoring him so I posted him an Easter egg. He had always kept the shiny foil wrappings, smoothing out the creases and keeping them in his bedside cabinet. All of his homework smelled like chocolate and sometimes he wrote secret messages on the back of the foils and slipped them in to my books. I found a place for Buckbeak and went back to Remus at the end of spring, saving the best until last. I waited at the end of a painfully familiar street. He stepped out onto the pavement and I wanted to carry his books for him but I had paws instead of hands. I bounced by his side because I had never been so happy. He let me in to our old cabin and everything had changed but the decor. He came through the front door, face free of wrinkles, suited and booted and smiling. He pulled me in to his arms and down onto the sofa, stripping me one garment at a time, kissing every bare inch. I caught my breath and caught sight of my loveless, bearded face in the mirror. The bowed mousy head in the reflection croaked a breathless greeting and I limped past the empty sofa to steady myself on the bookcase, suddenly weak at the knees.

* * *

I cracked a joke and he smiled and disappeared. I waded through the emptiness, pacing and wondering when he would get back from secret duties for the Order. I told myself that he wasn't the spy but his pockets were lined with money and he couldn't tell me where it had come from. The kettle hissed loudly in the next room and Remus reappeared with two cups of tea. I asked to use the bathroom and he crumpled in to my arms. Someone else was dead and I doubted his tears. Something cracked between our heaving chests and he took the small egg from his inside pocket with a smile. I wiped the tears from his face and I went upstairs. There was more of the same up there. I ran a bath, the hot water spilled over my body and my baby brother blew bubbles at me. My old clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe next to Remus's and one side of the bed was not sunken like the other. I sat down and waited for him to get changed. I didn't want to go to a Halloween party. Enjoying myself without my best friend felt like the worst kind of betrayal. I shouted in to the bathroom that I was going to check on Peter and I went back downstairs.

* * *

Remus had gone. I had imagined him. I curled up on the floor and they slammed the bars shut, telling me that I deserved to rot. I laughed at the irony and I cried for James's forgiveness for my failings. The front door creaked and I jolted, pressed flat against the wall. Remus was laden with shopping bags. He unloaded everything, apologizing before I could. He didn't hate me anymore. He urged me not to either but for the way the man I loved found it hard to look at me, I couldn't let that self-loathing go. He cooked for me but he didn't eat. I took my dish to the sink and Sam Cooke played on the radio. Lily was pregnant and we had been drinking with James in celebration. The dining table was covered in empty bottles and he was passed out under it covered in a blanket. Remus and I danced unsteadily on the back porch cheek to cheek and he pointed out my namesake where it sat high in the sky. I wanted to pull it down for him but he insisted there was no need. My light had gone out and I couldn't stand my own reflection. Remus set out a dining chair and offered to cut my hair for me. He ran his hands down the nape of my neck in the dim yellow light of an old canvas tent. Birds twittered, James yawned, his hands left my body and the scissors tentatively snipped away the years. His hand lingered at my shoulder and I reached up to hold it. Peter asked if we were gay and James bluntly replied that we were in love. I scrambled for the pressure of his lips knowing that this time they were not rain. I plunged in to the ocean, every sense overwhelmed at once and resurfaced gasping for air. Remus ran his hands over me like he was sure I was the ghost he had seen so many times before roaming these rooms. Fellow students were staring at us but I didn't care. I was going out in to the adult world and Remus and I were forever. The music hadn't stopped and the Headmaster winked at us. I promised Remus that we'd always be together, no matter what and twelve years later, across oceans of time, loneliness as long as quidditch pitches and nights darker than my name, it was the only promise that still held true.

_**A/N:** This piece was inspired by a conversation with a friend about the lasting effects of Azkaban and how whilst Sirius may not have been as far gone as Bellatrix, he still probably wasn't as sane as he let on. I imagine that his mind wandered and his memories often shook the foundations of his reality. Hopefully this doesn't make this fic too confusing. Did you get that impression? Did you like it? Was this a failed attempt at writing in first POV?_


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